Watch an Autonomous Tesla Charger Plug Itself In to a Model S
It's owner-made Tesla autonomy.
Elon Musk is a busy man, and there simply is not. enough. time. in the day for him to follow through with all of his world-changing ideas. That’s where Tesla’s customer base of makers and engineers come into the mix.
On Sunday, a Tesla Model S owner named Deepak Mital posted the below video to YouTube that shows off an autonomous Tesla charger he built. It’s similar to the solid metal snake Musk said that Tesla was working on last year. Tesla’s autonomous plug-in system was really snake-like. Or like a polished up Steelix.
Unfortunately Musk and co. haven’t released any more details about a commercial autonomous charger since last August. So Mital went and built one himself. It’s painfully slow and looks rough — the plugin process takes longer than the “I Wanna Be Like Other Girls” song from Mulan II playing in the background — but it can plug the car in and take the plug out by itself.
Mital’s invention (which he calls the “Evtron”) takes advantage of the self-opening charging port and a Raspberry Pi — the $35 micro computer that is a blank slate of wonder for programmers and makers.
Mital trusts his Evtron to avoid scratching the paint on his Model S, and the invention could be a boon for Tesla owners if Mital decides to adopt Musk’s open-source mentality. Mital plans to make his system available, Electrek reports.
Maybe Mital can even get the technology out and running before Tesla’s metal snake. After all, Tesla owners can already Summon their cars autonomously and Tesla’s Autopilot can drive the car autonomously. Plugging in just seems like an unnecessary hassle that doesn’t belong in the future Musk has planned for us all.
